Talk:Grounded theory

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I Hans Thulesius have the copyright to the article on Grounded theory previously posted on http://www.groundedtheory.com/dcforum/general/204.html#3 The article is a slightly edited version of the chapter on grounded theory from my thesis from 2003 and it is OK to publish it on Wikpedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.209.1.58 (talk • contribs) 06:00, January 9, 2005

Thanks!

Great editing by Edward who guarded copyright as a knight and in the middle of the (k)night improved the look of the article

Hans

POV warning and academic discussion (dispute)

Hi, good that there is an article about Grounded Theory now here. There is only one problem, and that is the reason I put the POV wrarning sticker on in: the article only deals with Glasers version of Grounded Theory and dismisses Strauss & Corbins version as "just standard QDA". I work with the Strauss & Corbin version of Grounded Theory and would argue that Strauss/Corbin is the true continuation of a systematic paradigma to create theory from data, whereas Glaser is only a pop science school (sorry to say that), labelling creativity and intuition without any systematic or quality standard as scientific method. On the other hand, I don't see a good way to improve this article without rewriting it completly. Maybe we should have a short Grounded Theory article with the history and "The Discovery of Grounded Theory" and move this one to Grounded theory (Glaser), and write another one about Grounded Theory (Strauss). -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 20:43, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

academic discussion part two

Nice to get a reaction to the article and fun with some academic discussion! I have rewritten my contribution a little to make it more neutral.

Background and why am I a Glaser disciple?

1. Barney Glaser came to my Swedish town (Växjö) in 2000 lecturing when I had to get the qualitative data for my thesis straight. Eventually his books and coaching helped me a great deal.

2. I had three years earlier started with the Strauss & Corbin book which promised a lot but I got stuck on the 14 rules of how to write memos and the axial coding which confused me so I gave up GT.

3. The book Doing Grounded Theory - Issues and Discussions (1998) was a gold mine. I learned that memoing was totally free and creativity exploded. Thereafter the sorting and rewriting stages put my data into a theory that fit and worked to explain what was going on in end-of-life cancer care - the balancing between cure and comfort care and the balancing of words when disclosing bad news, and a lot of other balancing acitivitites. I used the GT for my PhD cover story as a model, and my thesis was eventually selected Family Medicine Dissertation of the year 2003 in Sweden. The main argument was that it was methodologically sound.

Now I can assure you that If you follow a Glaserian GT you will see a complete system of careful methodological steps but without detailing these steps in order to:

1. respect each individuals personal recipe (see Doing GT chptr 4) with optimal creativity, and 2. staying open to the serendipity and circular sequencing of the method allowing concepts to emerge instead of forcing received concepts onto the data.

This makes the method difficult for researchers trained in a deductive tradition (which most of us are) and it takes time to learn it. And dr Glaser admits that GT is not for everyone. And for sure many researchers in the scientific literature claiming to have used GT havent followed many of the steps from open coding to memoing to selective coding to sorting back to memoing and eventually to writing and rewriting etc. Most have just generated a few concepts, a few but not many have found a core variable, and a minority have an integrated theory around a core that explains the behavior of participants in a certain field of interest. If your view on Glaser GT comes from reading claimed GTs that used the buzz label to justify their (mediocre) QDA work then I can understand you.

Glaser's critique of Strauss version of "the constant comparitive method" (what GT was called from the beginning) is that Strauss narrows down and forces the use of a standardized set of theoretical codes. Also Strauss doesnt really mind using preformed models for analysis. Thus the openness of the method is lost. This doesnt necessarily make it bad but it derails heavily from what was outlined in the Discovery book from 1967 and also in Theoretical Sensitivity (1978). The rigor of GT is about staying open as much as possible. This means that preformed hypotheses are forbidden while Strauss & Corbin leaves a door open and actually suggest the use of only a few theoretical models while there exist several hundred. Strauss' method is not classic GT, and Glaser calls it "full conceptual description". But it sure can produce good qualitative data analysis, Glaser doesnt argue with that and me neither.

Finally, Glaser is alive and still develops the method in continous teaching all over the world and in five methodology books since Discovery. He is at the moment writing a sixth GT method book on theoretical coding of which I have read a few chapters that surely makes some central GT issues clearer.

I have done grounded theory for some years. Teaching and translating the Doing book into Swedish and working on my third theory and yet I'm still fascinated with how much more I have to learn. And I learn more every day. And as long as dr Glaser is around I will be happy to get GT directly from the horses mouth which is great fun and inspiring.

Hans

Removed following vandalism

the theroy of grouned is goin to your bed room for the night with no super!!!!!!so your grouned for being on this site!!!!GO TO YOUR ROOM!!

Ruchiraw 07:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC) gfcjh yrury ryuruyrtuy yuryuruyry ryuryr yyturyry ghjfgyj gdhd ghjdfhg dh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.101.166.158 (talk) 15:01, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Straight out definition

Could someone please add just a straight out definition to the start of this article. I mean, I found what I wanted to find over here, but the problem is that I had to go through all the preamble and historical accounts to get to it.

134.115.23.108 04:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I would like to see a more clear defintion of what grounded theory is.

Jpalme 16:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you go to Grounded Theory (Glaser) where you'll find a detailed explanation. An easy definition is: GT is about naming patterns of behavior. These patterns are conceptualized and the concepts should be explanatory and predictive of what is going on in a particular area of human behavior. (thulesius no logged on at the moment) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.68.88.144 (talk) 16:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changes and merger proposal

I made some changes to the intro paragraph in an attempt to clarify what grounded theory is. I also am recommending that the Glaser, Strauss, and Institute pages be merged onto this page until such time when the complexity, coverage, and/or notability of the topic requires spinning off subpages. As it stands now, there is information essential to understanding grounded theory that is only available on the Glaser page, while the other two are largely stubby and abandoned, and this page is largely historic rather than descriptive. Madcoverboy 04:07, 24 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge them pages! Hackser (talk) 23:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

further changes

I made further clarifications to the article. As of now, in my view it lacks mainly a simple explanation on how GT is concucted. Already too much of the article goes to the split between the founders, while the information on what GT researchers really do is somewhat underrepresented. Any volunteers? Pundit|utter 14:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the intro to give a fairly stripped back description that describes the elements that both founders agree upon. I'd say I'm against the merge. Apart from the GT institute, the other pages have enough info to merit their own existence. --rakkar (talk) 11:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would be good to edit the article with the following: data = plural; datum = singular. The verbs need to be corrected as follows, "data are..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.192.26.52 (talk) 23:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism section

This sentence does not give the reasons for its criticisms: "With its quasi-scientific procedures, grounded theory seems to be aping the methods of the natural sciences and making claims to explanation and prediction that are unwarrantable in social science. These criticisms are summed up e.g. by Thomas and James (2006)." e.g. Why is it quasi-scientific? Why is it unwarrantable?

This entire section, actually, is pure opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.215.112.79 (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone who has read the reference edit this paragraph for clarity? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.175.123.131 (talk) 16:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The text beginning with the name Goldthorpe is unclear. Could someone clarify or rewrite? Iss246 (talk) 16:23, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Discovery of Grounded Theory-book

In referring to the book from 1967, Barney Glaser (in Maines (ed), 1991, pp. 15-16) writes "Anselm [Strauss] taught me two cardinal rules of taking credit when writing is finished. First, one wrote the whole book and both wrote the whole book togheter. This is the concept of jointly and severally. Thus it is impossible to pin credit on one and not the other for anything in the book. Also each one is responsible for everything in the book. Second, it follows that there is no significance to whose name is first on the book. The simple reality is that one name has to come before the other". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tvever (talk • contribs) 15:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

POV Strauss VS Glasser

It is important to note that the Strauss vs Glasser methods debate is considerable. The methods of the two do diverge, and most of what has been published by Strauss and Corbin is not mentioned here. I am interested in the Strauss and Corbin method, and this article is not very useful for that.

A reason that there may be some lack of Strauss and Corbin method information is that Glasser's Grounded Theory Institute has more resources (even though many of their publications are focused on disputing the publications of Strauss and Corbin, rather than on refining the Glasser Method) than Corbin does.

I think the pages should be split again, due to the fact that while they come from the same beginnings, it could be compared to having Christianity and Judaism on the same page... 71.192.117.73 (talk) 04:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)Katy RN[reply]

Maybe you can improve the current article by adding information on Strauss/Corbin!? If not, the merger proposal suggested that the "pages be merged onto this page until such time when the complexity, coverage, and/or notability of the topic requires spinning off subpages". If you are willing to expand the rather short article on Grounded theory (Strauss) into something that is worth having as a separate article, there shouldn't be much opposition to a split. Rl (talk) 11:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Constructivist Grounded Theory

This whole paragraph comes straight out of Thornberg (fn 19). Jfredmenard (talk) 09:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A more balanced POV

To adopt a balanced point of view, this article is going to have to recognize that grounded theory is, I assert, not accepted by most scientists. The "positivist tradition" (i.e, science) allows for something like grounded theory in observational steps of scientific method. Patterns are observed in data that may represented relations among variables (categories of data). The problem is, we can't assume the relations are real based only on the data. Science says we need a test (involving prediction and other data) to lend credibility to apparent relations. The procedure of grounded theory does not include such a test, because that would be the positivist tradition (having a question to test in advance). Moreover, scientific theories are explanations, and grounded theory tries to explain based on one sample of data, a very dubious idea. Any explanation would only apply to the data examined, it would not be generalizable (i.e, the inductive inferences is not compelling.). This article includes many words, likely in the hope that more words lend validity. They don't. 174.53.223.28 (talk) 15:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Methodic" is not English

In the opening sentence, did the author mean 'methodical'? 'Systematic'? It needs to be fixed. DMTate (talk) 01:18, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

G. Thomas and D. James

I hate this paper. The seem to manage to spend 2000 words saying something that could be said in three sentences. --Writethenread (talk) 10:25, 4 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Restructure

I keep on wanting to restructure this article. But I'm not qute sure how to do so. Restructuring well can rqeuire you to understand the soure material and the "entire editorial logic" behind the articles structure at the same time.

Random thoughts that come to mind at the moment:

I don't like the use of bullets. But I don't know why. I think they make stuff difficult to read. I found some papers about how bullets remove the logical relation between sentences created by "but, however, and etc". I thin I might want to turn some of these into separate paragraphs
I want to merge premise and philosophy into a single section - perhaps adding some subsections.
I want to merge stages of analysis and nomeclenture, and turn nomenclenture into a discussion of methodology

Does anyone have opinions or suggestions. (Writethenread (talk) 10:47, 4 October 2020 (UTC))[reply]

User:Writethenread, The grounded theory entry is weak. I have tried to improve on the unclear writing. I recently hit a wall in the nomenclature section and temporarily gave up. Iss246 (talk) 20:27, 4 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm interested in this topic, so might have a go myself, perhaps you could give me some feedback if I have a go. Any advice would be useful :) ? I'm mostly trying to avoid a "you changed everything and it's terrible" scenario if I do some heavy editing. --Writethenread (talk) 11:44, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sure user:Writethenread, I would give you feedback. The Nomenclature section is a challenge. Sometimes when I encounter a weakly written, unclear batch of text on WP, I edit one sentence. Make the change. Enter the change. Then I proceed to the next sentence, sometimes right after I edited the previous sentence, sometimes a day later.

The Nomenclature section had me scratching my head. Look at the sentence that kicks off the Nomenclature section: "A concept is the overall element and includes the categories which are conceptual elements standing by themselves...." It kind of says, in effect, that a concept is a concept, or something like that. I'm not sure. Iss246 (talk) 18:15, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Writethenread, a few moments ago, I tried to improve the lead. Perhaps my edits of the lead can help us improve the Nomenclature section. Iss246 (talk) 18:36, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey there. I'll have a look at what you did. I've been digging into the literature for the sentence. I got the original book by glaser and strauss, and it was equally cryptic. I've found this iier.org.au/iier16/moghaddam.html - which looks like it might be helpful (searching google scholar for "grounded theory propert") --Writethenread (talk) 19:39, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, so I think the idea is that category is like a "label" you attach to data, you then group these into categories (groups of labels) and associate properties with different concepts in a category (categorical data) or "dimensions" - things that can vary. --Writethenread (talk) 20:06, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I read the book a few years ago. I don't believe that it is possible go into a set of qualitative data without any preconceptions or any ideas about the subject matter. I attended a seminar Strauss gave an NYU a few years ago and told him as much. Several graduate students at the meeting agreed with me. Others were noncommittal. I view qualitative research as one way to obtain ideas/hypotheses (although there are other ways) but I don't think it can be done in the Glaser-Strauss way. In the section on criticisms, that is made abundantly clear. Iss246 (talk) 23:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I found a nice source for properties / categories - sage handbook of grounded theory p.196 looks like it might be a clearer discussion of the meaning of terms. I think I agree with you in practice but not in theory :), in theory you could go and build a minimal possible descriptive model of what is going on (along with a minimal model of human language interpreted by a machine) and be completely clear and specific about of priors - though the technology to do so does not yet exist. In practice you have to use your brain and it's learned way of categorising and interpreting things - which will always have some priors. I'd like to think there is some middle ground there so that you can be "more objective" (or perhaps not obviously wrong)... like the whole point studying anything is that some things might be more likely to be true that others, and grounded theory-esque studies on some controversial topics have been pretty compelling to me as "not obviously biased, perhaps I should update me views". --Writethenread (talk) 06:37, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Cool cool. I had a go at a little rewriting of the first paragraph (as well as merging together sections into methodology). See what you think. I'm a fan of the sage handbook - it's one of those "edited sets of papers" so it gives a range of viewpoints. --Writethenread (talk) 16:56, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Plagiarism

Ugh, the split in methodology section seems to have been lifted from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sePEDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=%22Data+are+co-constructed+by+researcher+and+participants,+and+coloured+by+the+researcher%27s+perspectives,%22&source=bl&ots=JlPo2HYTKj&sig=ACfU3U1mTUGSJDtH0yAz-dDr6Oad5R1Lig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnkJP2v6DsAhUEi1wKHWrwCM4Q6AEwA3oECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=%22Data%20are%20co-constructed%20by%20researcher%20and%20participants%2C%20and%20coloured%20by%20the%20researcher's%20perspectives%2C%22&f=false . I think it might have bee there for a while. Not sure what to do about that. I'll start off by rewriting the sectioni. --Writethenread (talk) 17:38, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... it's worse that that. I think the majority of the article is lifted from this text. Looks like it might be a complete rewrite. --Writethenread (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That book was published in 2019 and most of this article predates it. Perhaps the copying was in the other direction? - MrOllie (talk) 18:06, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, all very confusing. Do you think we should do anything? --Writethenread (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Writethenread:@MrOllie: The entire entry was poorly written when I came to open it. I tried to edit it a little at a time. I was stymied by the Nomenclature section but did not check for plagiarism in the split methodology section or any other section. I wasn't thinking about plagiarism because so much of what I read was too poorly written to have been plagiarized!

I edited a little of the split in methodology section but I did so without knowledge of the book user:Writethenread identified (Research Methods in Social Science Statistics). BTW, I had reverted all the GT abbreviations and replaced them with the term "grounded theory." I did that because some parts of the article contained the term "grounded theory" and in later parts of the article the abbreviation "GT" was used, giving the article an uneven look. I think the GT came from the plagiarist because GT is what the author of the book Research Methods in Social Science Statistics used. What a mess!

Would it be helpful if we deleted the section covering the split in methodology given our own and WP's rejection of the use of plagiarized text? I guess that the "split" section was written by undergraduates, who sometimes don't understand the rules pertaining to plagiarism. We could delete the suspect text and invite editors who are experts in this area to cover the issue of the split. What do you Writethenread and MrOllie think? Iss246 (talk) 19:02, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Given the dates I think it is unlikely that this article plagiarized the book in question. If I'm wrong about that and we copied them just blanking and/or rewriting this article wouldn't be a solution, we'd have figure out exactly when the copyright violation happened, revert to before that, and get an admin to delete the bad revisions from the article history. - MrOllie (talk) 19:43, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's more than just that section. Philosophical underpinnings, stages, premise, and nomencleture are all in that book. I feel like agreeing with user:MrOllie . --Writethenread (talk) 19:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The book in question is published by Ed-Tech Press which has been found to be a non-reliable source that republishes Wikipedia articles: see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 304 § Odd publisher: Ed-Tech Press and Wikipedia:New page patrol source guide § Science and technology. I haven't compared the content of the article and the book, but judging from the discussion above and this knowledge of the publisher, this is likely a case of republishing Wikipedia content, not plagiarism. Biogeographist (talk) 20:34, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Biogeographist, thanks for the heads-up. I'm stuck on what to do about the Nomenclature section. Do you have a suggestion regarding that section? Iss246 (talk) 20:46, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't have any suggestions at this time, though I can see that the article needs more work. Biogeographist (talk) 12:24, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello User:Biogeographist, user:MrOllie, User:Writethenread. I think we have a made some progress in improving the entry for Grounded Theory although we still have some distance to go. Iss246 (talk) 20:09, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Grounded theory is a type of theory not methodology

Grounded theory is a type of theory and not a method. Glaser and Strauss's (1967) book, The Discovery of Grounded Theory, suggests ways to discover grounded theories. The book has a chapter on discovering theory from quant data. The relevant qual method is the constant comparative method. I think the article has some momentum now on the stance that it's a method, so I'm hesitating to wade in...! Andi Fugard [they/them] (talk) 11:17, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]